“A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on” is one of the most famous lines credited to the producer Samuel Goldwyn. Alva Johnston attributed it to him in his 1937 book The Great Goldwyn.
The website Quote Investigator found the joke much earlier. It appeared in the Irish Law Times in 1890 and in a 1926 newspaper column by the comedian Ed Wynn. Quote Investigator concludes that Goldwyn probably never said it. A 1969 account has Goldwyn saying the opposite about the producer Joe Schenck: “His verbal contract is worth more than the paper it’s written on.”